This video is mostly in Spanish. But you get the idea. When you have a fourth child you don´t so much change your life because of him. You bring him into your life. So here I am, working, while Leo is sound asleep.

During Franco´s dictatorship Spain was a very Catholic country. After more than 3 decades of democracy, Spain is not a Catholic country anymore. First, loss of religion became apparent with the legalization of divorce and contraceptives and the promotion of sex ed. This was followed by the decriminalization of abortion, the acceptance of drug possession for personal consumption (drug users are not criminals in Spain, but treated instead as medical patients) and a general acceptance of premarital sex. Later, gambling in public places became commonplace, prostitution was legalized and regulated, and gay marriage became legal as well. So other than euthanasia, I can´t think of anything that the Church used to opposed that is not legal now in Spain. While 95% of the Spanish youth declared in the 60s that religion played some role in their life, now only a third do.

Religion in Spain is mostly becoming tradition. People marry in churches because they are beautiful and full of history, not because they actually practice. They still teach religion in most schools, but to most it is as if they were teaching Spanish history, the history of a country that used to be religious but is not anymore. Now the only religious group in Spain are Muslim immigrants, whose views on society are surprisingly similar to those of the Franco. Nudity, for example, was a big “no no” at that time and it continues to be so for Spanish Muslims. For others, nudity makes part of the daily press in Spain. Nudist beaches and regular beaches are mostly mixed, and most people don´t mind.

But not only is Spain liberal in most matters previously opposed by the Catholic Church. Spain is also tolerant in other unexpected ways. For example, in Spain the use of P2P programs to download music for personal consumption is not a punishable offense. In Spain, people openly use Ares, Vuze, eMule for legal and what in other countries is illegal content without fear of being prosecuted. The only truly illegal activity is people who download music/movies, print CDs or DVDs and sell them. And this is but one example of a legislative system that, when faced with choices that involve tolerance vs restriction, it generally opts for tolerance, to the point that Spain has become one of the most tolerant countries in the world. As a result, Spain has become an incredibly popular immigration destination. Indeed I am one of them, I moved to Spain from NYC in 1995.

If anything, Spain proves that societies do not fall apart when they give up religion and almost everything that was illegal for religious reasons, becomes legal. Moreover, I believe that if Spain had not given up its repressive form of religious expression, it would not have been the success that it is now. For those, mostly in America, who believe that religion somehow makes countries more ethical, Spain proves the opposite. With a good secular and free Kindergarden to University education system Spain has less violent crime, less people in jail and certainly less policemen per inhabitant than mostly religious USA. The key distinction between USA and Spain, or Europe in general, is that while most people in Europe dislike the same activities that people in America dislike, the trend over here is not to make these activities a crime but to find more tolerant and reasonable ways to deal with them. In this way, Spain can focus its police resources to deal with serious crimes such as terrorism.

There´s a boom in the retirement industry in Mexico. Presently, there are around half a million Americans retiring in Mexico. They do this because they get great weather, nice people, and with the same income they can live much better lives.
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Most people believe that being Jewish is believing in Judaism: a religion. But this is not always the case. I am a Jew and I am non religious and there are many of us. So if I don´t believe in religion how can I be Jewish? I think the explanation lies unfortunately in that it is not only Jews who define Judaism, in my case, and in the case of many other Jews, Judaism was not only defined by sharing a common culture and history with other Jews but by the attacks of anti semites. In the case of Argentine Jews as myself there were three waves of attacks: the nazis, the Argentine military neo nazis and Hezbollah that greatly defined our identity.
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I just wrote this article in Spanish in which I try to explain to a non Jewish Spanish audience what makes me a Jew. I apologize to my English readers that my Spanish blog has many more articles. It does because Spanish is my native language and it is easier for me to write in Spanish.

Continuing on the concept of gmail becoming the new P2P, thanks to a reader in my Spanish blog, I came accross Gspace. Gspace is a hack on gmail that basically using a firefox extension transforms your gmail account into a Box.net or an MP3tunes or an Orb or an eyeOS.

As the founder of Einsteinet –who had a similar concept in 2000 which unfortunately we could not execute well– I am extremely interested in projects that combine both storage and serving apps from the net. Gspace is VERY clever.

I read so many articles about the purchase of Google and Youtube and yet I felt I had to add my brief analysis. To me, the purchase of Youtube by Google is rational and simple. Largest advertising company in the world buys largest TV network in the world. Makes a lot of sense. And the price if anything is low.

Now there is one element that both Google and Youtube are missing and that is the Apple gadget know how. Apple is the only company so far that has dominated the three key fields needed for a huge success in media: download, web site and gagdet. Should Apple be brought in to make a Youtube/Google integration in the next iPods, which should, of course (like the Zune) have WiFi?

I was just having lunch with my son Tom, who is 12, and I told him that I was going to send him an e mail and he replied that his gmail account was full. Full? I told him that he´s probably one of the only people who have so much e mail that gmail gets full and he replied that he and his friends all had the same problem. Why? Because they use gmail as the new P2P. They send each other songs and compressed movie files over gmail.

In any case, I hope I am more successful about the condom talk next year as I was with this year with my explanation on music and movie commercial licensing policies. If my school gets a book and we all read it, he said, why shouldn´t one of us buy a CD and we all enjoy it?

Yes, I love them both. La Mala Rodriguez from Spain and Los Pibes Chorros from Argentina. See if you can get hold of their music. Hardly politically correct, but extremely original, global and yet local. Many people in Argentina give me a hard time because I like Cumbia Villera. But I do.